Vinyl lager is a beer with a deep amber hue, sweet malt taste and a slight balancing hop touch. This beer is produced using a lager strain of yeast and is fermented at the low end of ale fermentation temperatures, allowing the beer to maintain its easy-drinking lager-like characteristics.

ABV: 5.1ABW: n/aColor: 12Bitterness: 20Original gravity: 1048

This tangerine-hued lager sports an impressive retro rock-poster-like label, thanks to artist Jim Pollack who has been creating such posters for decades. The aroma of Magic Hat’s new spring release is as sweet as that first spring rain, mostly of toasty malt and caramel. The first sips also follow the sweetness suit, but are backed up with just enough citrus and herbal hops to keep it all in check. The lager yeast rounds out this beer nicely, making it smooth and creamy. A nice beer in an even niftier package that promises to be an enjoyable companion on those much-anticipated warm spring days.- Lisa Morrison

They call it a “spring lager.” To me, it’s big, tasty Vienna, bright amber to the eye, but perhaps with a suggestion of Kölsch in its spring-like floweriness. Nutty, toasted malt features in the aroma, along with light floral notes. The taste is bittersweet, crisp and clean, with nutty, toasted malt providing the bedrock and perfumed, floral notes wafting above. The finish is very dry, straight from the swallow. The same nutty malt notes keep on delivering and eventually bitterness takes over. It’s a little too dry in the finish, perhaps, but it certainly hits the spot.- Jeff Evans

Lisa MorrisonLisa Morrison, aka The Beer Goddess, writes about beer whenever she can and also gets to talk about it on a weekly radio show in her hometown of Portland, OR.

Jeff EvansAuthor of the Good Bottled Beer Guide and The Book of Beer Knowledge, Jeff Evans is an eight-time editor of the CAMRA Good Beer Guide and one of Britain's best-known beer writers.